1962First close-up view of Venus via Mariner 2.

1965First close-up view of Mars thanks to Mariner 4.It orbited Mars for three years following theencounter.

1973Pioneer 10 is first to visit Jupiter. It iscurrently 8 billion miles from the Earth.Mariner 10 is first to visit Mercury.

1979Pioneer 11 gets first close-up look at Saturn.Its last signal was received in 1995.

1985Uranus' first close-up by Voyager 2.

1989Voyager 2 takes first close-up of Neptune.It is almost 90 Aeronautical Unitsfrom Earth and still sends backsignals today.

2001New Horizons was proposed to AO-OSS-01,NASA's Jan. 20, 2001, request for flyby missionproposals to Pluto-Charon and the Kuiper Belt.New Horizons was one of two proposals chosenfor further concept study in June 2001, and NASAselected New Horizons as its Pluto mission onNov. 29, 2001. Led by Principal Investigator (PI) AlanStern of the Southwest Research Institute's SpaceStudies department, the mission team includedmajor partners at the Johns Hopkins UniversityApplied Physics Laboratory, Stanford University,Ball Aerospace Corp., NASA Goddard Space FlightCenter and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

2002National Research Council's Decadal Survey for PlanetaryScience ranked the reconnaissance of Pluto-Charon andthe Kuiper Belt as its highest priority for a new planetarymission this decade.

2004INL builds its Space and SecurityPower Systems Facility.

January 12, 2005New Horizons teams from acrossthe country gather at Cape Canaveralto watch Deep Impact launch andundergo first pre-launch run-through.

May 2005PI Alan Stern and Project ScientistHal Weaver lead team to discoveringtwo more of Pluto's moons. They are43,450 kilometers (27,000 miles)away from Pluto.

2005New Horizons’ RTG is built in justnine months at INL. It is taken toKennedy Space Center in Floridafor pre-launch testing.

January 2006INL’s RTG is delivered to NASA andinstalled in New Horizons just daysbefore the launch.

January 19, 2006New Horizons missionsuccessfully launches fromKennedy Space Center at14:00:00 PM. It was the fastestlaunch ever at 22,000 miles perhour.

February 2007New Horizons will reach Jupiter.The craft will take close-up photosand will be the closest flyby of thegaseous giant. New Horizons will flythrough Jupiter's vicinity and gainmomentum like a slingshot throughits gravitational pull. Speeds willincrease to roughly 36,000 milesper hour.

2014-2015First close-up photos of Pluto willtravel back to Earth in 4 1/2 hours.

July 2015Closest encounter with theninth planet. The closestphotographs will be 1,000times the resolution of thebest pictures from the HubbleSpace Telescope.

2016-2020New Horizons explorationof Kuiper Belt Objects.